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Poster for Exorcist: The Beginning

Exorcist: The Beginning

Go back to where the horror began.

2004 · 1h 54m · R Horror
Directed by Renny Harlin

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Overview

Years before Father Merrin helped save Regan MacNeil’s soul, he first encounters the demon Pazuzu in East Africa.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
10%
Tomatometer
Rotten

The serious Catholic themes that made the original film genuinely disturbing have been flattened out into a cartoonish backstory pitting Merrin against Nazi storm troopers.

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
Rotten

Blood, flies, maggots, ravenous hyenas, power failures, grave-digging and much ineffectual voodoo ensue.

Ron Stringer, L.A. Weekly
Rotten

As shocking as an Dokken album cover and, finally, as pious as The Passion of the Christ.

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice
Rotten

Never feels like anything other than generic, brain-dead, Dolby-jolt, multiplex hackwork -- I kept expecting Skarsgard's habitually catacomb-prowling Merrin to bump flashlights with Lara Croft.

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star
Fresh

It rates fairly high on both the Scare-O-Meter and Gross-Out Scale, with an early hyena attack guaranteed to have you flinching in terror.

Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News

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